i work in a newsroom (i am not a journalist) and one day i will write about what really goes on — it makes me sick sometimes.

news is now fluff that connects the commercials

The Mercury News was once required reading in the IT business as they carries stories about the Valley. At least newsprint can be recycled. I stopped BYTE when I could no longer find any stories among the ads and the local recycling stopped taking magazines.

Access to information is decreasing every day while the conduits for it expand. Why read a newspaper with no news in it? Everything is being run as a corporation, not a business, and few people understand the difference.

It’s amazing what we DON’T hear or read in the US media nowadays, isn’t it?

As you say, the same applies (with a vengeance) to radio. It is absolutely execrable; and in few places is it worse than in north Florida. Between the holy roller preachers, crazed right-wing ranters, and the approved play lists which may as well be aired (and often are) by a computer stuffed in some closet in St. Louis, there’s nothing on the AM dial but dreck. The only local signals that save the FM dial around here are university affiliates WUWF-FM (Pensacola) and WHIL-FM (Mobile).

The Reagan administration bears a large part of the blame for eviscerating the Fairness Doctrine and undermining cross-ownership and media concentration rules. But Congress, the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration have much to answer for, too.

As Ben Bagdikian says, the result is a “crisis in democracy.” But you won’t see the media mentioning it, much less reporting about it in depth or naming the names. It’s just too profitable to keep the public in ignorance.